Read Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition for Free Online

pecking order of stagehands.

    "Get Mr. Gazzara's chair!" yelled the biggest, fattest, most
important prop guy.
    "Get Mr. Gazzara's chair!" his assistant chimed in.
    "Where the fuck is Gazzara's chair?" a teamster belched.
    Finally, they reached the bottom of their clan's totem pole, and
the guy at the bottom fetched the chair, running about a hundred
and fifty yards in order to gently place it within plopping distance
of Ben Gazzara's butt.
    The out-of-breath lackey smiled and then watched Mr. Gazzara
light up a cigar and sit down without saying "Thank you."
    I was impressed-mightily, if not favorably.
    Eleven-thirty arrived, and still Mr. Gazzara wasn't ready to work.
He hadn't changed into his wardrobe, hadn't shaved, and hadn't
visited the makeup man. It goes without saying that he hadn't
come close to memorizing his lines. In fact, as I watched him look
over his script, I became convinced that he was reading it for the
first time.
    High noon came. It was time for rehearsal, and an amazing shift
occurred. Even on our first walk-through of the scene, Mr. Gazzara
was tight with his lines, and really seemed to listen as I spilled out
my own. His reactions and responses seemed genuine, and affect ed me so much that I actually managed to forget I was acting. He
so totally absorbed us both in what we were doing that I forgot to
be nervous, forgot the numerous technical tasks we were performing, and nailed the scene in just two takes. This was a powerful lesson.

    On "Run for Your
Life." (BarryWilliams)

    Later, we knocked off my close-ups, and out of the comer of my
eye I saw Mr. Gazzara approach my dad and tell him something.
Later, I badgered my dad mercilessly, until he finally smiled and
confessed that Mr. Gazzara said that he thought I had done a really good job.
    What a day!

     

    nce you've appeared on one television show, future acting jobs start getting a lot easier to grab. Casting directors start recognizing your face and stop treating you
like pond scum; the credit list on the back of your head
shot gets longer; and you find that you're no longer an outsider
but a bona fide actor, and a member of that legendary, glitzenshrouded private club, the "show-business community." Once
you're "in," things start snowballing. At least that's how it happened for me.
    After my experience on "Run for Your Life," I was astonished to
find that I'd actually started to get busy, making the rounds as the
troubled kid on a good handful of TV cop shows. For about six
months, if a series needed a runaway/punk/delinquent/from a dysfunctional family/with a heart of gold, it was me.
    First up was "Dragnet." I had about four or five scenes in a special "Christmas episode" whose plot was corny even by "Dragnet"
standards. It revolved around a misguided resident of L.A.'s urban
jungle who swipes a plaster baby Jesus out of his comfy churchyard manger. I played an eyewitness, and my task was to inform
Joe Friday about what I'd seen.
    Even as a twelve-year-old kid, I was embarrassed by the script,
but it was a job, and a decent-sized part, so I decided to try and
make it work. I studied my role as never before and had my lines
down forwards, backwards, and sideways by the time I got to the
set.
    I met Jack Webb and was immediately struck by the fact that
there was no perceivable difference between him and Joe Friday.
They had the same speech mannerisms, the same slouching posture, the same no-nonsense/no-sense-of-humor approach to life,
and of course they had the same bad haircut.

    It quickly became apparent that Mr. Webb, who also produced
and often wrote the show, was not a man who could stomach the
wasting of time. He'd kept the "Dragnet" crew hopping, saying
that he liked to move fast to "maintain spontaneity," but he wasn't
fooling anybody. As the show's producer, he was really just trying
to keep his production costs down by every means possible.
    The oddest of those means was revealed to me as we